Valentine water transfering

I love these containers!  They are sold at Michaels (or use to be anyway).  Just an empty heart bottle with a cork top.   I use a eye dropper of sorts (the plastic kind you can get from Montessori-n-such) .

Valentine Pom-Pom Tweezing

This is yet another activity using the suction cup pads I previously posted about here here.  Just some simple pom pom balls and some tweezers.  These tweezers light up red when squeezed!  I believe they are for scrapbooking (possibly from Creative Memories).  I jut can't get enough of using these pads!

Friendship Braclets

With Valentines day coming, we've been talking a lot about the value of love and friendship!  It brought back memories of making 'friendship bracelets' from when I was in elementary school!  This is a different version of that geared for the young preschooler!  We're encouraging them to make these friendship bracelets for their friends.  In the small bowl are letter beads to spell their friends name!  If it's friend from our classroom they can go get their name card to see how to spell it!

Heart Sewing

For a variation of a sewing activity we are using plastic sewing cards (found in the sewing/embroidery section of Michaels or Joanne's)  I traced a heart (some pink, some purple) and pre-cut the yarn (in coordinating color) and attached it to the sewing card.  The needle is stored in the little jar in the pink basket.  This work has been fun for the last week as most kids can do it independently and you can see the pattern on both sides of the card!

  In the end I cut it out (if they'd like) for the perfect Valentine to take home :)

Snowflake tweezing

These snowflakes come by the pack at Lakeshore Learning Store or you could just cut out your own.  We put dots on it with a blue sharpie for the snowflakes to be placed on.  I think the erasers came from Oriental Trading.  

Sink and Float

Of course this is a traditional Montessori activity everyone knows about!  I just like the set up this year with the laminated sorting sheet and the small bowl for the experiment.  Just enough water but not too much!  I do think I'll change up the sorting sheet with some kind of symbol for sink and float so it has more control of error. Suggestions?

Egg transfering

For our animal kingdom unit we've been doing for a few months we've spent quite a bit of time talking about birds!  Of course eggs are a big topic and this is a work that's been well enjoyed for the past month. The nest and eggs came together as a set at Ben Franklin.  The eggs were lightly glued in and I just had to gently pry them off to make this.

Simple and fun Snowman

Of course you have to have at least one snowman work on the art shelf in the winter!  This is ours this year.  Very simple and fun.  I especially like the way it's organized on the tray with the paper holder :)  The eyes and buttons are black beans and the nose is a orange pony bead.  The arms are Starbucks coffee stir sticks.  (Starbucks is very kind to preschool teachers- they gave me a whole box years ago for free!)

The snowflakes are foam and from Oriental Trading- I've had them sitting around for years so here is the perfect place for them!

Heart Magnets

This was an idea my director came up with just yesterday and I put it together last night! I found these little hear magnets (probably from a drug store like Wallgreenss or Rite Aid) in the school's Valentine box.  We took a piece of thin steel (sold in hardware stores) glued on a piece of lavender paper on it and added some heart stickers (color coded) to make the shape of a heart.  We then laminated it so it can be used for years to come!  It's very fun and as well as refining those small motor skills it  helps with one-to-one correspondence too!

Felt Heart Matching

This is an extension of color box 2.  I just cut out hearts of all 11 colors to match!  It's beautiful all laid out and brightens up the classroom in February.  The heart basket was just a lucky thrift store find :)

snowflake drawing

This is a simple snowflake drawing work.  Some of the older children draw each step (hence the long paper) and the younger children just draw one complete snowflake!